The concept of an historical database is introduced as a tool for
modelling the dynamic nature of some part of the real world. Just as first-order
logic has been shown to be a useful formalism for expressing and
understanding the underlying semantics of the relational database model,
intensional logic is presented as an analogous formalism for expressing and
understanding the temporal semantics involved in an historical database.
The various components of the relational model, as extended to include
historical relations, are discussed in terms of the model theory for the logic
ILs, a variation of the logic IL formulated by Richard Montague. The
modal concepts of intensional and extensional data constraints and
queries are introduced and contrasted. Finally, the potential application of
these ideas to the problem of Natural Language Database Querying is discussed.

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